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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: coins, which shone like little suns. Item, five /genovines/, or five
hundred-franc pieces of Genoa; another very rare coin worth eighty-
seven francs on exchange, but a hundred francs to collectors. These
had formerly belonged to old Monsieur de la Bertelliere. Item, three
gold /quadruples/, Spanish, of Philip V., struck in 1729, given to her
one by one by Madame Gentillet, who never failed to say, using the
same words, when she made the gift, "This dear little canary, this
little yellow-boy, is worth ninety-eight francs! Keep it, my pretty
one, it will be the flower of your treasure." Item (that which her
father valued most of all, the gold of these coins being twenty-three
carats and a fraction), a hundred Dutch ducats, made in the year 1756,
Eugenie Grandet |
